A Briton suspected of being on an assassination mission has been arrested in the war torn Russian province of Chechnya.

The man, named as John Beneni, was arrested with two others in eastern Chechnya and is suspected of plotting to assassinate a prosecutor in neighbouring Dagestan, said Salikh Gadzhiyev, chairman of the Dagestan department responsible for fighting criminals.

Gadzhiyev said the trio were being sent to Dagestan by Jordanian born Chechen warlord Khattab.

Those arrested were identified Beneni, Sergei Tyunin, a Russian who served in Chechnya with federal forces but switched to the Chechen side in 1999, and Chechen Mukhtarpashi Ismailov.

Richard Turner of the British Embassy in Moscow said he could not confirm that a Briton had been arrested.

Gadzhiyev said that when the three were detained, they were found with a Kalashnikov automatic rifle, other weapons and extremist Islamic literature.

Beneni claimed he was a journalist and had entered Chechnya via Turkey and Georgia but, said the Russians, he had no documentation to prove his claim.

He is being held in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, a Russian republic east of Chechnya.

Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in humiliation after the 1994-96 war with separatists, then returned two years ago after Chechnya-based militants invaded Dagestan and after apartment bombings around Russia that killed more than 300 people and were blamed on Chechens.

Although Moscow claims to control most of Chechnya, armed clashes there are frequent.

On Thursday, a Russian convoy was ambushed by rebels on a highway between Shaami-Yurt and Novy Sharoi in western Chechnya, killing one officer and wounding seven others. A bodyguard of the first deputy mayor of Grozny, the Chechen capital, was gunned down on today.